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Comments
I haven't listened to that tribute album, although I know of it.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that pound for pound I find Arnold to be the least successful composer of the Bond series.
Given he had 5 kicks at the can, and I can only really enjoy 2 (maybe bits of TND too), I just can't rate him too highly. All the one-offs gave us memorable scores (although very of its time in the case of Conti and perhaps ahead of its time in the case of Serra).
I too think QoS's score is much better than CR's. I like CR's because it draws on Cornell's YKMN a lot, which I also liked. It sort of has an old school vibe because Arnold used the title song theme prominently in the score, like Barry - for instance in African Rundown.
However, I think SF's score is just as good as CR/QoS - only different, with Newman's approach. I want more orchestration from him next time and an incorporation of the title song in his score. I'm ok if we don't have too much of the Bond theme blaring out, but perhaps a little bit more would be appreciated. If we get it during the opening GB then I'll be happy.
When did you first listen to it? It's nearly 18 years old, so maybe I'm clouded by nostalgia, but I love it as much today as I did when it was first released. Or perhaps some of the artists don't translate too well? I can't imagine Jarvis Cocker is particularly well known in the US, but I think his All Time High is brilliant.
There are two types of SF viewer. Those who think the Tennyson scene is a masterpiece and those who think it's straight out of a hyphalutin student film. There's a huge distance between those points of view and both sides staunchly believe they are correct. I don't see either side yielding, so I guess that SF's legacy at the moment is that it is arguably the most divisive film in the canon.
All I can concretely tell you about these films, chrisisall, is how each movie affected me when I watched it, and I was just leaps and bounds more entertained by Skyfall than November Man. I may be a pleb in your eyes, but isn't that what makes this subjective art form so interesting and wonderful? How it can have such vastly different effects on different people?
If things like the fight scenes and plot of Skyfall took you out of the enjoyment of the movie, I can definitely understand the fault in that. However, in that regard I think you might be part of the (vocal) minority. I don't think Skyfall is suddenly losing it's gloss and appeal, that's for sure.
Haha damn, after reading your post, I can't really deny that I'm in the "Masterpiece" camp and it makes me feel like a bit of a geek for thinking that :P
I will say, thought, that I don't *staunchly* believe that I'm correct; definitely some room for interpretation there. In order to counter your post and make me feel better I'll say that I don't think it such a black and white issue. :)
Ha ha, to be fair I'm being slightly naughty. It certainly isn't that black and white. The impression I get on here and among those I know is that it really splits opinion a lot more than any of the other films in the canon. I don't know too many in the middle-ground shall we say. Apart from myself that is!
More than anything it is SP and its quality that will put SF in perspective imo, either way.
In the end, it IS how a movie makes you feel. Like the duel in DAD I sometimes get so into the verbal fencing I lose track of possibly offending someone, which is not my goal.
*lowers sword, salutes*
Cheers, my good man. It's nice that there's this place on the internet where we can have these great debates!
Certainly. There are two ways I can see Mendes going with it. One I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy, and the other would disappoint me.
That always irked me too @tony. I find the whole end scene in London symptomatic of the things Mendes cocked up. It all seems a little rushed, 'Hey, I'm actually Moneypenny' - 'Oh and here's the new 'M' in the office from the old films, remember them?', 'you should do, you all cheered at the gadgets on the DB5'.
I look to the OHMSS ending and how much better SF would have played out with a less Hollywood ending.
As for it being a good looking film, I think this is overdone. Yes it looks fine. But is the production design really better than the Ken Adams era? Do the locations blow us away? Not really. Istanbul in a Bond movie for the third time and following swiftly on the heels of other movies using the same location and settings only a few months before. We get the Turkish coastline doubling for the South China Sea and some aerial second unit shots of Shanghai. And although it was nice to see Bond in London, having lived in London for several years, I didn't feel it captured anything particularly unique about the capital city. Although naff, the TWINE chase on the Thames at least showed something a bit different. London doesn't really feel like a character in SF, even though London is so characterful. The rest was sets and perhaps a little too much CGI.
That's a very interesting point @Getafix, something I've spoken about with friends a few times.
Casino Royale could have used an ending more like this/the book as well, so as to avoid the whole Venice "4th act".
Also, that mission was definitely a failure as well: Quantum tricked Bond hook line and sinker with Vesper, MI6' big lead got killed and the bad guys got away with the money (Terrorism = Successfully funded by the British government!)
Not this '' Skyfall made over a billion dollars! That makes it a great film! '' defence of Skyfall again.
By that reckoning '' Transformers 4: How to have sex with a minor and get away with it ''
is not a shit product as well.
Many do.
It has been a year or two since last I heard it, probably. I remember liking a few of the renditions sprinkled about the album, but on the whole I never returned to it. I'll have to give it a fresh listen soon though, to see if anything has changed. It could stem from the simple fact that I am largely not the biggest fan of covers, especially when the original tracks are so iconic on their own. Goldfinger, Thunderball, From Russia with Love, Nobody Does it Better and the rest of the fantastic Moore era opening songs all come to mind.
I agree about the Venice sequence. Everyone who knows my Bond tastes is aware of the obsession I have with CR, but one of my only criticisms is how that part was handled. I would've rather seen something more in tune with the novel, where Bond finds out Vesper's betrayal some other way but is too late to save her. He heads to their room in haste and finds her overdosed on pills, gone forever. It would have given Dan even more chances to really show people how amazing an actor he is as Bond reacts to Vesper's suicide. Campbell could've even had the scene transition into a narration of Bond reading her letter as the camera pans from Bond over to Vesper lying in the bed.
I do like the Venice sequence, don't get me wrong, and can understand why the team wanted to inject one more big action sequence into the movie, but I think an ending of the kind I described would've been interesting to see as well. All that said, I still love Dan's performance at the end of that sequence, as Bond tries desperately to save Vesper, finally realizing it's a lost cause. Great stuff.
I don't, however, agree that any Bond films that end with what could be interpreted as 007 losing forfeit any good merits. I don't see how CR's ending is a point of contention with you as it largely adapts Fleming's novel very faithfully. Bond doesn't walk away in the book without massive damage taking toll on his mind and body, and the movie Bond is no exception, though I'd agree that the cinematic counterpart faired much better than the literary one. In fact, the ambiguity of the ending is one of the things I love about the Craig era films in general, especially Skyfall. These movies made me think long and hard about hero vs. villain dynamics, losing vs. winning, and more. These films showed me just how much victories simply don't exist, and the "winner" as most see it is just the person who suffered the lesser pains and was able to survive the heat, while the other simply crumbled under the increased pressure.
From the POV of Skyfall, for example, Silva ends up losing all his men, one of which takes from him the satisfaction of killing M, Bond foils all his plans to get at her, and worst of all, right when he was about to fulfill his destructive mission, Bond again takes it right away from him with a knife to the back. At the end of the movie we find Bond as the "last rat standing," a survivor, but not a winner of any sort. He'd taken intense battering throughout the film, went into a months long haze of pill and alcohol abuse, had his past dug back up, had his prized car blown to shreds and his boss killed while he tried to eliminate the threat Silva posed, who played cruel mind games on him the entire time.
The way I see it, Bond neither won or lost, two choices that don't even exist in "our world". Losing would imply that he was unsuccessful in his entire mission, yet he was able to stop Silva's threat and save untold lives, lives that would've been lost in the man's quest to get M's head on a pike. However, winning would imply that the plan went off without a hitch and only minimal damage was done, which is most certainly not what happened, and though he still stands at the end of the film, he lost a lot, including a surrogate mother. For those reasons, not only are winning and losing very trivial designations to apply to the complexities of humanity and their collisions with each other, they are also very much nonexistent in the real world context of Skyfall.
Well, I am partly majoring in writing, so hopefully I'm at least 1/10 decent. ;)
I may have misrepresented my feelings on CR and it's ending; I found the ending to be totally satisfying and appropriate, and that it pays excellent homage to the original story, I only found the way they get there to be somewhat dragging.
I wanted to mention that it could be interpreted that the overall mission was failed, but not that this necessarily has any negative effect on the movie!
As I said before, fantastic post!
That notwithstanding, I still have no great fondness for SF, and I have tried....
Thank you @0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 . Lovely to read this, and again another "theme" that goes through "Skyfall"....and all of the Craig films actually.
The films truly gave a more grey-ish portrayal of the hero-character in films. Bond is not just Superman. He doesn't "win" that black-and-white. He's foremost a person with whom many people can associate with. Slightly outlandish, but never the next Iron Man or Captain America. "Captain Britain", agent 007, does it how I like it. Flawed, but succesful. Failed, but resourceful. Damaged, but strong. Suave, but gritty. Funny, but serious. Nobody does it this way ;-).
Regarding "Skyfall", I'd like to add that the theme of espionage through the film is exquisitely handled. I think it's also a "torch bearer" of espionage on the whole, which directly or indirectly criticises the likes of Bradley Manning, Richard Snowden and Julian Assange. Secrets have always been important during thousands of years of civilizations. It's the reason we many visitors in here still can enjoy freedom and free speech as opposed to other less democratic societies. This subject matter is also what kept Ian Fleming going.
So whatever you say about "M" s incompetences during the Craig-films, on one point she tells the truth: During her "Tennyson" speech. Call it absolutely sentimental or perhaps even a result of "trying to hard to be smart". For me it worked. For me this scene gave me goosebumps. And it gave meaning to a Bond film...that I've never saw before in the franchise. I loved it:
Also, I think one might watch this tribute film, also containing the Tennyson speech:
One last thing.....I expect "SPECTRE" to have similar themes, to have similar re-watching value. With Sam Mendes we'll get another film that will be heavily discussed. I. Love. That. Period :-)!
I actually think that for "SPECTRE" the focus will really be on the evil, dark side of villains. It will perhaps themes that mirror "death with absolutely no reason, except crime". Silva had a strong motivation to execute revenge, to avenge him on "Mother". Logical results where the terrorist attacks and insane shoot-outs. But that all came down to revenge. I do think the villain in "SPECTRE" has way different motivations to execute death and destruction.
In reality, much of the intelligence community is made up of butt-kissers, a*s coverers and flat out idiots (rather like government, corporate & everyday real life).
The people who CARE about something besides themselves are the agents working diligently hoping that their hard work is not flushed down the drain for purely political or 'smooth sailing' reasons, and the whistle blowers that sacrifice their lives for a clearer conscious.
Let's not drown our fun & sometimes silly fandom in blood-soaked pretentiousness, eh?
Is Dirty Harry the "torch bearer" of loose cannon cops on the whole?
Is The Thomas Crown Affair the "torch bearer" of robbers on the whole?
:P
I think you've hit the right nerve here. I'm all for freedom of speech and right to privacy, but when men like Snowden see questionable acts being perpetrated upon the public by so-called government protectors, I feel he has the right to expose those injustices, free of litigation hell. What have these individuals done that is so wrong, after all? They alerted their kith and kin to the kinds of activities governments employ that squashes a lot of the unalienable human rights we possess, especially in what is apparently considered a "free country."
But of course, Snowden and his kind are busted and forced into seeking sanctuary abroad to escape prosecution imposed by their own governments, the same governments who spied on millions of their own citizens and took record of their privileged personal information without notifying a single one. And the Snowden and Assanges of the world are the baddies? Riiiiiiight.
Just more of that delicious, gray moral ambiguity we've been discussing lately. Now, all those childhood tales of good vs. evil start to fall on deaf ears, and for good reason.
And linked to that, SF clearly did something right in terms of getting people through the door and it would make perfect sense for the producers to retain the essence and spirit of SF with Spectre rather than go off in a new direction. So if thats true, can we expect the same level of debate over the Xmas period re Spectre?